The present invention relates to techniques for simultaneously displaying a background page and an interactive content page in an application window, and more particularly, to techniques for always displaying at least a portion of a background page in an application window while the application simultaneously displays content from a second content page.
The Internet offers various ways for users to communicate with other users, such as instant messaging. Instant messaging provides real-time communication between users within a closed community. Only registered users can send or receive messages via an instant messaging service. Users are required to sign in to the same system (or possibly the same server) with a pre-selected user name and password before sending messages.
An instant messaging software application typically allows a user to define a list of “friends” (i.e., other registered users with whom the user wishes to communicate) and to reject or ignore messages sent by other users. The list of friends is an important feature in an instant messaging application. A user can easily send an instant message to a friend in the friends list by clicking on that friend's username in the list. The friends list also indicates who is currently online and available to receive instant messages.
The list of friends is displayed when the user clicks a tab on the bottom of an instant messaging window. A user can click on other tabs at the bottom of the instant messaging window to view other web features. For example, clicking on a stock tab displays a list of current prices for a selected group of stocks. Clicking on a news tabs displays a list of hyperlinks to today's top news stories. The contents displayed in these other tabs is typically accessed from a web page.
The friends list is hidden when the instant messenger displays content from one of the other content tabs. As soon as the user clicks on one of these other content tabs, the user no longer has access to the important context of their friend's status. A user is therefore forced to choose between tracking the prices of their stocks and keeping an eye on their friends. For this reason, the features provided by these other tabs are greatly underutilized by IM users.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide techniques for making a friends list visible while a user in an instant messaging environment views the content of other tabs.